


the heartbeat of an empty home

by Meridas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Curses, Gore, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Haunting, Horror, Nightmares, Other, Panic Attacks, Pre-Relationship, Psychological Horror, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, The MT Home Is Definitely Cursed, The Tell-Tale Heart, discussion of fantasy religion and burial practices
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2020-02-29 22:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18787564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridas/pseuds/Meridas
Summary: There is an absence in their house, and something haunts the Mighty Nein with their biggest regret.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to steelneena for beta work and for helping me with this piece; horror is pretty far out of my usual wheelhouse, so thank you especially for the help! Plus thanks to the tinhat collective for encouraging me to write this <3
> 
> There's also a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/a.mackenzie13/playlist/6dwMFgBdeDcMDYvGMSLpk0?si=tKz2RKWaTqy1pXvX8Cq8Cg) for this fic!

Jester is just settling in to tell the Traveler about her day the first time something happens.

The first sign is that she misplaced her sketchbook. She never does that—it’s far too important, plus even though she could maybe get a new one, there are drawings in there that she wants to keep. She’d never risk losing it, so it sends a little spike of panic through her chest when she can’t find it in her bag.

She looks up, and spots it resting on her bedside table. She breathes a sigh of relief. Silly. She must have set it out to get all ready earlier, and forgotten about it.

Sinking down onto the bed, she flips idly through the pages of her sketchbook. She smiles at the multiple pages she’d filled up with drawings of Kiri, alongside the little girl’s careful penmanship spelling out her name and her age.

The next page is kind of sticking to itself. Jester frowns and carefully peels the paper apart. Her fingers come away sticky and… red.

It takes a second to fully hit her—the coppery smell and color and shine of tacky, half-dried blood smeared across her notebook.

She jolts to her feet, her sketchbook falling to the floor at her feet. It _thunks_ to the ground but stays open to that page, thick, viscous red that obscures a page full of flower crowns and— _oh._  

“This isn’t funny,” Jester whispers, her voice shaking to her own ears. “Please put it back. I-I thought you liked Molly, I...I don’t have very many pictures of him. Can you please put it back?”

There’s no response, just the thick smell of iron slowly filling, choking the air. The blood oozes from her notebook, spreading thick and dark across her floor. It’s not slowing, not stopping, just spilling endlessly from her ruined picture.

Jester leaves her room at a run.

* * *

Nott has a lot more collections than she originally thought she did. It’s quite late, and she should probably go to bed, but she won’t feel settled into the new place until she looks over all her things and finds places for them in their new home.

She places her buttons in glass jars, lined up nicely so they’ll catch the light in the morning. She’ll keep lots of the jewelry with her, though, so that she can wear it. With that in mind, she empties her pouches and pockets onto the table, and starts going through them. 

_Jade bracelet, silver necklace, gold and platinum rings. Sapphire brooch, garnet ring, golden sunburst—_

Nott freezes. Then, frantically, carelessly, she pulls the candlestick closer. Hot wax splashes onto the back of her hand. She doesn’t trust her normal darkvision, suddenly, and she needs to make sure. She can’t have. She didn’t—

She rummages through her collection, her heartbeat picking up quicker and quicker. There’s the golden sunburst, an opal ring, a delicate chain attached to an earring, a bangle that’s too curved for a wrist but would fit perfectly over a curling tiefling horn, a necklace with a cheap platinum-plated holy symbol—

Nott shoves herself away from the table, shaking. “I didn’t,” she squeaks, as the candlelight flickers over Mollymauk’s jewelry sitting on her table.

_So much for “I can’t steal from this one”, hm? What about “Molly said not to steal from happy people?” Didn’t manage that for long after all, did you?_

Nott squeezes her eyes shut and presses her hands over her ears. “I didn’t,” she repeats, her chest growing tight. “I didn’t, I didn’t—”

_Walked away with them anyway, though, didn’t you?_

“No!” she screeches, and a _crash_ from the desk makes her eyes shoot open.

The candle is on its side, the flame sputtered out. Wax pools on the tabletop, dripping slowly off the side until it hardens, cooling in the night air.

Her vision adjusts. The pile of impossible jewelry is… just rings. Just some rings with pretty gemstones, that she’d taken from various hands and pockets in Nicodranas.

Nothing of Molly’s is there.

Her hands shake so badly that she’s having a hard time picking up an individual ring. Instead she sweeps all of them back into her pouch, willy-nilly, not bothering to count or organize them at all. Just—into the bag, into the desk, out of sight. She shuts the desk, scampers out the door, closes it behind her. She heads toward her bedroom, toward Yeza.

Her hands are still shaking.

* * *

Alone in his room, Fjord takes a deep breath and flexes his hands. He holds out his hand in front of him, and focuses on summoning his blade.

The falchion appears in a flash of energy, and Fjord let's out the breath he was holding in a rush. He feels almost dizzy with relief, with the cool hilt of the sword back in his grasp.

He lays the falchion down across his lap with a sigh. As much as he needs it, the curved, golden blade still pains him to look at, sometimes—Molly'd only had it for a short time, but it suited him, far more than it feels like it suits Fjord. He feels like such a pretender, especially now with the threat of powerlessness weighing him down.

He looks down at the blade of the sword, avoiding the yellow eye at the hilt.

Instead he sees two eyes, bright ruby red, staring back at him.

Fjord shoots to his feet. His knuckles are pale and tight around the hilt as he angles it into the light.

“What now?” he snaps, managing to keep his voice angry instead of scared. “Not enough to yank me around, you just gotta remind me more of how I failed? How _weak_ I was to get taken and lose my friend?” He tightens his grip to the point of pain.

The voice that answers him isn't in his head this time, though. It bounces around the room, echoes like sound in an underground cell, not a bigger bedroom than he's ever had to himself, and it steals his breath like a shock from a will-o-wisp. 

_You don't need much reminding, Fjord, not when you use my sword every day. Still having fun with it now? Still pleased that you got to take it off my corpse?_

“No,” Fjord gasps. “No, that's not—”

 _You finally got the best toy in the box, didn't you, just like you always wanted. All those years being picked on, beaten down, and you didn't hesitate to_ take _what you wanted as soon as you had that chance. Just had to wait til I was dead!_

Fjord tries to drop the sword. His hand stays locked tight around it, shaking with effort. “That's not what happened,” he says, but he can hear the weakness in his own voice. “That's not why I—”

 _Just had to sit nice and quiet, say a few pretty words when it was your turn. Don't bring up the fact that_ you _once came back from the dead. Hope the others don't wonder how I came back before, don't ask Jester if she knows anyone, don't ask for favors from those with the power, just keep your head down and keep everything for yourself, because as long as I stay dead, you get to keep it. What a good little warlock you are, stealing power, stealing magic, useless without it, your patron must be so proud..._

“Stop—”

_What else do you leech from people who were kind to you? Going to steal my accent next, too?_

“STOP!”

The sword clangs to the floor. Instead of saltwater, he smells snow and frozen earth over a fresh grave.

Hand shaking, he dismisses the blade. It doesn’t stop the lingering cold.

* * *

Caleb hears his name, soft and fond from the doorway. It slides through the excited haze of arcane words in his mind, of new spells and new, incredible magic at his fingertips, and he doesn’t think much when he hums in response. Light footsteps approach his desk, and a warm chuckle settles in the room like a familiar quilt.

“Always working, Mister Caleb. You’re not going to even take a break to enjoy the new home?”

“I do enjoy it,” Caleb replies absently, reaching for a new sheet of paper. “Although, I wouldn’t call it—”

He freezes. There’s a pressure on his shoulder, light and gentle like the memory of a lavender hand. But there is no warmth to it like a fire-resistant tiefling, just the bone-deep cold of a void.

“This is not real,” he whispers.

That chuckle comes again, warm and amused on the surface, chilling in the wrongness of its presence and the infinitely more terrible reality of its absence. _Why don’t you take a break_ , the haunting murmurs, _come and enjoy yourself, have a drink, have some fun. You and I could have had more than fun, you know, if you ever wanted. If you’d ever said the word—_

“Stop it,” Caleb snaps, and finds himself shaking. He curls his hands into his lap, away from the delicate sheets of paper that could be so easily set aflame if he loses control. “Stop— _why_. Why his— _why him_.”

The cold touch wanders over his shoulders, creeping across his chest to rest over his heart like the touch of a lover. _Why me? Is that what you asked yourself—why me, why have feelings for a carnie like me? Why let someone like little old me distract you from all the great and terrible things you could accomplish. You tell me, Caleb, what was it about me? Something made me special to you... but not special enough to make you save me._

The laugh sounds discordant now, on the edge of hysterics, like Mol—like a voice on the verge of spiraling from laughter to sobs. Caleb squeezes his eyes closed, trembling. He cannot imagine tears in Molly’s eyes. This is _not Molly_. Mollymauk is lost, and there is nothing Caleb can do about it, not in any spellbook, not in the Cobalt Reserve, not in the new realms of dunamancy he is just beginning to unlock.

 _Are you trying?_ the voice asks. _My dear Mister Caleb, does this mean you’re thinking of me? You give my name to a house, keep me around just enough to torture yourself sometimes, to push yourself. Have you thought of all the things that might have been? Thought about everything you could still get to have, if you succeed? If you bring me back?_

A cool breeze runs across the back of his neck like a breath, teasing and intimate, and Caleb’s breath is locked painfully in his chest. The freezing absence gathers in front of him, and Caleb shakes in his place, shoulders by his ears, his eyes closed so tightly he sees spots. _Don’t go forgetting me, dear,_ the voice whispers, and he feels a cold, delicate pressure like a kiss upon his brow.

He gasps. The presence is gone. His room is cool, but not frigid.

Caleb buries his face in his hands.

* * *

Beau can’t sleep. Every time she closes her eyes, she hears a voice taunting her about her _kaleidoscopic friend_. Alone the dark, she feels the freezing cold and hot-copper scent of Glory Run Road pressing the air out of her lungs. Her hands feel dry and cracked as if she’s just pushed dirt over a fresh grave.

She throws her blankets aside and gets up. She can’t afford exhaustion, but she can’t stay in this damn room. Barefoot, she heads up to the garden, and pushes down the memory of Molly offering up tea bags that smelled like chamomile and lavender and vanilla with the promise of a peaceful sleep. Even in a goddamn swamp and definitely in the midst of angling to find something illegal, he’d found something to help out a group of traumatized, insomniac assholes.

Beau rubs her hands over her arms, fighting off the chill inside the house. So much for not thinking about it. She can practically smell the lavender as she hurries through the hallways. Beau picks up her pace, and slips into the garden to take a deep breath of herb-scented air.

“Ugh!” She gags immediately. “Clay, what the _fuck?_ ” 

“Hello, Beau,” he says genially. He’s holding a watering can, but there’s not much around that looks like it’s in any state to save with a quick sprinkle. “There seems to be a problem.”

Beau puts her hand over her nose and mouth and looks around, wide-eyed. “Your tree is _fucked up_ ,” she points out, muffled. The air is thick with the slimy smell of rot and decay, not at all like the fresh green smell she was expecting. The massive tree in the center of the tower is fucked up to say the _least_. The pale brown bark has gone dark and wet-looking, like the whole trunk has been soaked in something foul.

She inches closer, braving the smell to get a closer look. Beau doesn’t claim to be an expert on natural things, but it looks diseased in a big way. Dark sap leaks down the outside of the bark, rolling in big, slow, viscous drops, like pus from an infected wound. 

“Yeah,” Clay says, coming up behind her. He tilts his head at the tree. “I don’t know why it would do that. It’s definitely not supposed to.”

“You _think?_ ” Beau backs up again.

Caduceus waves his hand at the workbench behind him. “Everything else in the ground just died. And, I seem to be having trouble getting things moving along their natural course like normal.” He gestures at the plants on the ground, lying in blackened, slimy heaps like they’re stuck at the grossest part of Clay’s Decompose spell. A cold shiver goes up Beau’s spine. “I think I might try some cleansing spells in the morning, but there’s some new plants in pots that seem okay, so that’s good.” 

Cautiously, Beau bends over to look at some ferns in ceramic pots. They look alright to her. “Is it just the tree doing this? Do you think it’s some kind of plant magic shit or— _fuck!_ ”

Before her eyes, the fern curls up, drooping and withering. Dark liquid begins to _drip, drip, drip_ down the tip of the dead plant. It splashes onto the table, a growing puddle of deep crimson red.

Beau gags, bile rising in her throat. Her chest feels tight and her stomach heaves. Drip. _Beau!_ Drip. _Are we doing this?_ Drip. _If you’re engaging him, I’m engaging him—!_  

Red liquid runs over the side of the table, splashing onto the floor at her feet. In a daze, she takes a step back, away from the advancing puddle of—fuck, it’s not blood, it can’t be blood, there’s no fucking way that this is Molly’s blood, Molly’s voice calling out the last thing she’d heard him say, Molly’s body hitting the ground in front of her, Molly’s last breath choking around the glaive in his chest and—

“Huh.” Clay straightens up and scratches his head. “Well, I—Beau?”

The only thing that answers is the sound of her footsteps, running away.

* * *

Yasha doesn't really notice anything different.

Missing Molly has become as much a part of her life as fighting. Her grief is as steady as the phases of the moons; sometimes it’s less, but she never feels like it’s gone. Molly will always be in her soul, but her heart doesn’t understand that he is no longer in her life as well. When she catches the scent of lavender in their new house—because Caleb is more right than he knows, to call it an empty home with that name, with those initials—she stops for a moment, and closes her eyes. Her throat gets tight. She thinks _I miss you still._ But then she continues on. Someone must have brought lavender through to plant in the new garden.

She hears his laugh that afternoon, that mad, delighted cackle that always made her smile. It still makes her smile, even if it’s only her memory, even if it also makes her chest ache with longing. She makes a mental note of the joke Jester told, just one more thing on a list of moment she will tell Molly all about, when she gets the chance in some other life. 

She’s heading to bed when she spots the necklace on the floor. It looks like Molly’s periapt—and it is still Molly’s, in her head. To her it will always be Molly’s, for as long as she remembers seeing him bounce up to her, showing off the most expensive thing he’d ever treated himself to, the first magical thing he’d even owned. How he’d played with it, adjusting the chain, preening like a peacock. Vain little thing. He always was, in a way that defied the world, in all its darkness and cruelty, to try to tell him he wasn’t allowed to light up. She misses that boldness. She misses him so much.

The periapt on the floor is cracked down the center of the red heart, dull and lacking all of its magical glow. Yasha frowns at it, then picks it up from the floor. She hadn’t thought that magical items could be so easily broken. Maybe Jester or Caleb can repair it, after all. 

She sets it gently on the kitchen table. If it’s fixable, she supposes it should go back to Caduceus. It has helped him, after all. It isn’t his fault that it didn’t help Molly when he needed it more. Yasha wasn’t able to help him, either. There’s no need to take out her grief on a piece of jewelry.

She walks away from it, and she doesn’t look back to see the broken periapt shimmer and change back into a plain silver necklace from Nott’s collection.

She dreams about him. Of course she does—she can’t get away from her dreams. This new house, the time spent trying to make it seem like a home, as if her home isn’t lost in the ether. As if she didn’t fail so spectacularly, not once, but _twice_ , that her god has seen fit to show her just how trapped she is. She dreams about Molly, about their new house that can never be her home; she chases his voice down hallways, through rooms she doesn’t recognize and doors she can’t return to, until she is lost _lost lost she lost her love and she lost her soulmate and she will never get to go home again—_

Yasha sits up with a gasp. The sheets are tangled around her and she fights them off, wrestles her way free of _shackles and chains and she can see him fall but she’s powerless, helpless_ the blankets until she stands panting in the middle of the room.

Slowly, she picks up a pillow her thrashing had tossed to the floor. It smells faintly of lavender when she pressed her face to it; she doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream. She squeezes the pillow tight and breathes in deep, and she feels the dam crumbling.

There’s faint light coming through her window when she raises her face. She curls up in the deep, cushioned seat there, hugging the pillow to her stomach. The glass is cool against her forehead as she leans against it and closes her eyes again, and lets the hot tears stream silently down her face.

With the scent of lavender in her mind, it’s so easy to imagine that Molly is close. If she lets herself wish, just for a moment, she can practically feel the soothing hand he would brush across her hair. For a moment she holds the pain even closer, and she can squeeze her eyes shut and feel the kiss he would place on her head, so familiar and so welcome whenever she needed him to be close. She needed Molly so much, even more than she realized before she lost him. She still needs him. She can stand on her own, but she is never going to stand as complete as she was with Molly in her life.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. There’s a cool breeze across her face, where Molly’s hands would be warm as he brushed away her tears. He was good at comforting her. She let him into her heart and her space and he fit so well, and now she just has an ache where he used to be. 

Yasha opens her eyes and stares blindly out the window. She lets her mind go blank, lets the conjured phantoms of comfort go. She won’t be sleeping again tonight.

Then she goes downstairs in the morning, and the faces around the table are all equally drawn and pale and sleepless. And their stories spill out, compounding tales of something that is haunting them with this one shared regret. This house is not a home without Molly, and they are haunted by its emptiness with every passing heartbeat that they do nothing.

She still isn’t completely sure that this curse lays on her, though. Can it touch her, if her home is already lost? Everything is the same in this house as it was on the road: she misses Molly with the aching remnants of her soul, and nothing will change that. There’s nothing some measly curse can do to make her miss him more.

But maybe, that morning, a curse could be the best thing to happen to her.

She sits in silence, in awe, as the Mighty Nein reach the decision that the best thing to do is handle this curse themselves. Not with layering magic on top of magic, or striking out at the encroaching presence and testing their power against it, but something so simple they should have thought of it long ago.

They call in a favor, in exchange for a single scroll of enchanted paper. Armed with one chance, one hope to make things right, they pack their bags. And for the first time as a group, they go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a note, I haven't watched CR in a while, and I'm not looking for corrections on what kind of canon info I'm either ignorant of or willfully throwing out the window. 
> 
> However, I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions to the fic!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual happy ending is still coming but uhhhh it’s taking me a minute.

They reach Molly’s grave just after noon, and Jester immediately begins to set up everything she’ll need for the hour-long process of casting the spell. Yasha watches her, wishing she could do more to help.

She clearly isn’t the only one. They all break off, distracting themselves or standing watch; she sees Caleb going through his pockets one by one, and Fjord sitting nearby, apparently deep in concentration. Beau is pacing, and fiddling with something between her hands. Yasha finds herself standing near Nott and Caduceus, keeping an eye on their surroundings. 

It’s Nott who breaks the quiet between the three of them. “I hope we’re right about this,” she mumbles. “I mean, what if we do this and it doesn’t change anything?”

Yasha frowns down at her. “What do you mean?” she asks. “If—the spell might not work? We only have one.” Her heart constricts at the thought. She doesn’t want to consider what she’ll do if this spell fails, and this hope is snatched away from her. 

“Or what if _this_  spell works, but it doesn’t fix the house?” Nott says fretfully. “What if we left Yeza in a haunted house?”

It takes Yasha a moment to absorb what she said, what she didn’t say, and process beyond the lump of ice in her gut. When she does, she can _feel_  how close she comes to flying into a rage right there, but she stomps it down. Her frenzy won’t help anyone. It won’t help Molly, and that’s the only thing that matters.

“Yeza can always leave,” she says coolly, “and who cares about the house? It's just a house. If the curse doesn’t break, we’ll still have _Molly_. What else matters after that?”

She won’t look at Nott, but she sees the other woman freeze in the corner of her eye. Her fingernails bite into her arms as she clenches her hands, desperately clinging to her composure. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Nott says in a small voice. “I—he—”  

“Who says we shouldn’t have tried this earlier, anyway?” Yasha snaps over her. “I didn’t know—Jester is the strongest cleric I’ve met. If I’d known that _this_ was possible, I—we could have tried so much sooner. Found this spell from someone else, or found someone with powers like the woman who brought _you_ back to life. Maybe we could have avoided all of this haunting bullshit altogether.” Maybe they wouldn’t have left her with her own haunting _every day_ since she found herself at Molly’s grave. Maybe her best friend didn’t need to be alone and _dead_ for months on end, and she just didn’t know. She just—

She’s going to have a hard time forgiving herself for this, she knows. She can only hope that Molly will be able to help her.

“It’s as good a way to break the curse as any,” Caduceus chimes in. He tilts his head to the side, considering. “I wonder why the garden was affected, though. I didn’t sense any apparitions or voices like you all described.” 

“Maybe it passed you by because you didn’t know Molly,” Nott says. She’s picking anxiously at her sleeves, twisting her rings endlessly as she watches Jester set up what she needs for the ritual. Yasha doesn’t comment on it. 

Instead she turns to face the clearing. “I think it was haunting you too, Caduceus,” she says, and she’s terrible at hiding her emotions but she does her best to keep her voice level. “We all have the same guilt. Maybe it found something about him to use against you, too.”

She hears the rustle of fabric, but she isn’t going to look at him. She’s going to stare out at this little meadow until it blurs before her, and not look at how calm he remains. “You know, my tribe has… certain things that we do, when someone dies. To honor their life, to lay their body to rest, and make sure that their soul can be free. What do you want to have happen to your body, when you die?” 

He makes that thoughtful noise again. “To go back to the earth would be nice, I suppose. All part of the cycle.”

Yasha nods. “So, what if you died, and someone you had never met used magic to make it so that your body would never decompose? What if after everything you did with your body and your life, someone just ignored everything you wanted, or didn’t ask about your faith, and just did what they thought was best? What if they made it so your remains would just be frozen exactly as they are, forever, unable to finish your part in the natural cycle? Some part of you would never be able to return to the earth, and the Wildmother.” She can hear Nott shuffle uncomfortably next to her, but she doesn’t look at her, either. 

“Sometimes you should ask before you go ahead and impose what you think your god does best,” she finishes quietly, gazing blindly over the clusters of flowers in the clearing. “Not everyone worships like you. And not everyone wants the same things or feels the same way. Maybe that’s what you should try to learn from your garden.”

Yasha doesn’t wait for a reply. She walks away.

* * *

 For all of their dallying, for all the running away and choking down feelings and stewing in regret that they have done, the ritual is… surprisingly easy. 

Jester makes use of the scroll as if she has done it a thousand times before, without even needing the bit of luck that Caleb’s spell grants her. She asks the Traveler to help guide Molly home. Beau does a card trick. Yasha brings out a book full of flowers. Three offerings, three attempts to help him back. Caleb sits back, his hands clenched so tightly that his nails cut into his palms.  

It’s useless to wish that he had something, anything really, to offer Mollymauk. No matter what he was promised, tempted with, by the… curse or illusion or whatever haunting plagues their house that night, it does not give him any kind of right to Molly. It doesn’t matter how many memories he has clung to these months, not when there are better people to reach out. Better people to connect with Molly, and far better to love him. 

In the end, Caleb doesn’t make an impact, really. But he doesn’t matter, because the scroll drifts away to gentle mist, and Mollymauk opens his eyes again. 

Caleb can only breathe out a long sigh, relief and happiness and letting go the last tangles of grief and regret. For the first time in a long time, it feels, he can replace that with _hope_. It is a wonderful feeling.

“You’re all okay,” Molly whispers, his voice raspy and quiet but so delighted. He looks up at all of them, gathered around him, and blinks rapidly at the sight of Caduceus. “Wow, hello, there. You look… you all look…” He seems to slow down, taking in the sight of how changed they are—Jester’s hair growing out, Fjord’s tusks growing in, Caleb’s bare arms and face, Nott’s dress and missing mask, the new clothing they all wear. Caleb can see the evidence piling up in Molly’s expression, in the small, unconsciously protective hunch of his shoulders. He still has a smile on his lips, but now it looks almost nervous, afraid of an answer he is trying very hard not to find. All the happy feelings suddenly curdle in Caleb’s stomach. He thinks of all the time they have spent running away, and how they can possibly say this to Molly.

“You look different,” Molly says, even softer, even rougher than before, and for an instant Caleb considers lying to him. _The truth is vicious_ , he remembers, and this truth squeezes his heart like a vice and could surely do worse to Molly’s if they speak it. 

He thinks about lying, but he’s too late. “We’ve been all over the place,” Nott says, her creaky voice coming down like a hammer before he can stop her. “I mean, it’s been more than six months since we were here last, and we have so much to tell you, but our _house_ was haunted and so hopefully it’s fixed now that—”

“Nott,” he hears Fjord hiss, too late. Caleb can’t even muster his voice to help, to possibly salvage any of this situation. All he can see is the way Molly’s face falls, his expression broken open and vulnerable for a split second before he goes entirely blank. Those ruby eyes lower, cast down to the ground and away from any contact with his friends. Molly’s tail lashes once before it curls securely around his waist.

“Oh no,” he hears Jester whisper, and he can recognize the sound of her heart breaking as she realizes what they have done.

“Molly,” Fjord tries, “it’s not—she makes it sound like...”  

After a tiny hesitation, Molly opens his mouth, his hand half-raised as if to wave it away. But nothing comes out—no sound other than a small, hitching gasp. Molly slaps his hand over his own mouth, his eyes wide and staring at none of them, at nothing, and just shakes his head.

_I’m sorry_ , Caleb thinks, far too little and too late. _I’m sorry._

* * *

 The world seems kind of… hazy. 

Everything seems much colder than it should be, and even with someone’s cloak wrapped around his shoulders he can’t seem to stop shaking. He doesn’t really know whose cloak it is, either. He’s—he wasn’t really paying attention, there. The whole world around him feels too much, sharp and bright but also wavering and far away like he’s stuck underwater looking up. 

Molly takes a deep breath, shuddering. He can breathe again, so that’s something. Should be enough to push away the fear that he’s already losing time, can’t even remember who gave him their cloak. Can’t really remember the words that they all said around him, everything that washed over him and felt like coming home, felt like a rescue, until—until… 

_Hopefully it’s fixed now that—_

Now that he’s back. Now that they’ve come back and fulfilled some… some kind of obligation. Something they had to do, nothing they particularly wanted to do. Nothing they felt pressed to do until something haunted them. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t him, he thinks, and almost giggles to himself. His head is spinning. How would he know, anyway? How’s he supposed to know if he haunted his friends into coming to get him, while he was _dead?_  

Molly lurches to his feet. The cloak falls from his shoulders, his hands too numb and clumsy to grasp it. Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t helping with how cold he is. And anyway he doesn’t want it, not if it’s some kind of obligation. He doesn’t need to be taken care of. He needs— _fuck_ , he needs them, he knows he does. Molly’s always needed people. And he—he still cares about them, whether they really want him around or not. He remembers dying for them, and so much may have changed for them but he still feels like he’d do it again in a heartbeat. More fool him.

Someone’s voice calls his name, but Molly waves a clumsy hand to bat them away. His feet are more or less under him, now. He just needs a little space. He just wants to get… just a little bit away. Just into the trees, not far enough that he’ll get lost but maybe far enough that he doesn’t have to look at the rest of them, to hear the confusing rise and fall of their voices and drown in the conversation that just keeps closing higher and higher over his head.

Despite the cold, the complete lack of his usual grace that plagues his limbs, Molly manages to stumble away from the sounds until everything around him is _quiet_. Just a nice, natural, normal quiet of outside, nothing like—well. He’s trying so, so hard to push away the actual quiet of the grave. If his notoriously shit memory is good for anything, it'll let him forget that soon, because if he has to keep that in his head along with all his other bullshit, he thinks he might really go insane. 

His throat hurts. He knows, with the hot prickling dread of his very earliest memories, that his voice isn’t going to work very well if he goes back to the Mighty Nein. Whether they ask him questions or just ignore him now that they’ve checked him off their list, he knows he won’t be able to respond like he should, like he’d clawed his way toward from the beginning. Not the way they’re all used to. 

Molly leans against a tree and just tries to breathe normally. He can’t quite do it; something in his chest keeps catching, hitching on every other breath. Doesn’t help that he can’t stop _fucking_ shaking. He’s trembling like a damn leaf and he doesn’t even know why. 

_She makes it sound like..._

Like he didn’t matter. Well, that’s fine, he always knew he didn’t matter that much. Only really mattered to Yasha, probably, and he was so sorry to leave her but he tried. He knew the rest of them likely hadn’t cared that much about him. Why then, gods damn it _why_ couldn’t he shake free their voices, everything he’d heard in that soft fuzzy place just at the edges of his memory, compared to what Nott said now that he’s just back and they fixed their problem and they don’t have to lie to him anymore—

“Molly?” 

Yasha. Just Yasha, no one else’s voice crushing into his ears over the top of hers. Just familiar, sturdy, beloved Yasha, no one else. No one who needed him to put up a facade, not right now. Her footsteps crunch along the ground as she comes up to him, until she’s a warm presence right in his space where she’s always fit. 

“Yasha.” Molly sways into her, bumping their shoulders together. “Can I...” 

Words are difficult. He—it’s like he _knows_ them, he knows more than just _empty_ , but everything else hurts as if each word has to be dredged up with bile. But she’s never needed him to make sense, really. She knows him. She knows him like no one else ever has, and she pulls him into her arms without another word, and Molly hides his face in her shoulder and melts. 

Yasha’s hugs are really the best thing in the world. Worth much more than five gold, he thinks a little manically. He’s pressed up against her, her arms wrapped all the way around him and holding him tightly. She’s warm and all-encompassing like this, blocking out the _too much too bright too cold_ of the world around him. He can feel his muscles already relaxing at the pressure, like Yasha’s squeezing every bad feeling right out of him. 

Molly finds that he’s matching his breathing to hers, too, the slow, soothing rise and fall of her chest against his. He hasn’t felt so safe in a long time, but Yasha is here and she’s got him and there’s nowhere safer. She holds him just tight enough, the kind of pressure that makes him feel grounded and secure in his own body when nothing else can. She rocks them a tiny bit, just a barely noticeable but incredibly soothing sway, and Molly’s next breath hitches and hot tears finally spill down his cheeks and disappear into her shirt. 

“Thanks,” he whispers. Yasha just tucks his head further under her chin and kisses the top of his head. 

“I’ve got you,” she promises, and she takes his weight and holds him together tightly as he lets himself fall apart.


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you want to leave with me?”

The words pop out of her mouth before she’s even really thought them through. Yasha doesn’t know how much time has passed in silence, just the two of them standing in the forest together and holding each other as tight as they can stand. It’s been a little while since Molly’s silent, wracking sobs calmed to hiccups, then to shivers. Neither of them has made any move to let go yet.

She knows that her suggestion comes out of nowhere. It’s even a little surprising to her, but as soon as she says it, she knows that she means it wholeheartedly. She’s come to love the Mighty Nein, each in their own way. She does care about them. But Molly has always been different, and right now he comes first. She let so much time go by without him, and she’s not going to  fail him again. 

Molly’s shoulders are tense under her arm again. She rubs his back slowly with one hand. “We don’t have to,” she assures him. “But, if you want… I mean, they can be a lot. And they’re happy to see you, but… if you want some time to just, come back slowly.” She squeezes him gently, hoping that she’s still just as reassuring as he always said. “You just, you don’t have to say anything to me, you know? We can take things very slow and you won’t have to pretend around me. It’s okay if you need some time, before your words come back or before you’re ready to see them. I still won’t leave you alone.”

She feels his arms tighten around her waist, and his back trembles with his uneven breaths. Yasha just waits, just holding him. She moves to petting his hair, and waits until the uneasy twitching of his tail calms down again. 

Slowly, Molly eases one arm back. Still tucked tightly into her, his face still hidden in her shoulder, he brings his hand up to where she can see it and signs, _Yes please_. It’s a little clumsy, maybe, his hand still a little shaky, and it’s been a while since they have used these signs. But Yasha remembers them, and it seems Molly does too. She rubs his back again, and presses a kiss to the top of his head. 

“Okay,” she says quietly. She almost feels a little guilty about the rush of feeling that goes through her—mostly relief, some sadness, something that feels like it might be a selfish kind of excitement. She doesn’t know how to unpack all of this, so she shoves it aside. They both have a lot of complicated things on their minds. They’ll have time to either figure them out or let them fade a little before they go back. 

She rocks them slowly back and forth, just enough to soothe. Molly signs one more thing, shaky and quick, before he tucks his hand back around her torso. 

_Thank you._

* * *

 As anxious as they are, they manage to give Molly and Yasha almost half an hour before they reach their breaking point. Cleaning up after the resurrection spell only takes up so much of their time, and only Caduceus seems to really pass the time just sitting and communing with the Wildmother in this particular spot. Fjord tried joining him, and he managed for a time to consider her role and thank her for helping them get Molly back. But right here, he can’t find the usual kind of calm that Caduceus produces, or even the tentative sort of balance he’s been able to reach when communing with the Wildmother. The now-open grave keeps drawing his eyes like a magnet, this dark spot in the earth that he can’t help but glance at every few minutes. The extensive quiet the rest of the Mighty Nein have settled into isn’t helping. Caleb sits aside from the others, pretending that he is absorbed in his book although he looks incredibly tense. Beau stands like a statue, facing the direction where Molly left and Yasha followed after, her arms crossed. That kind of stillness might be comforting, if it were someone other than Beau. Instead she radiates her stress like a small, worried sun. 

Jester, of course, is the one to break their tense quiet. “Do you think I should send them a message?” she frets. “I mean, it’s been long enough, right? I don’t want to bother them but what if they got hurt or something out there?”

“Yasha’s not gonna let anything happen to Molly,” Beau says, “‘specially not now.” Catching sight of Jester’s crestfallen face, Beau’s shoulders relax and her gruff voice softens. “But I think they’d be okay getting a message from you, Jes.”

“Okay, good!” Jester clasps her symbol between her palms. Fjord gives up his pretense of meditation and moves closer to her, curious and more than a little worried himself. Caleb’s head remains bowed over his book, but Fjord knows he hasn’t turned the page in nearly five minutes now. 

“ _Hi Yasha_ ,” Jester begins, “ _you’ve been gone for ages, and I know you’re super strong but please tell us where you went so we know you’re okay!”_

Waiting for replies to Jester's Sendings always feels like it takes longer than it does. Especially when her face changes as she hears words come back. Especially when the reply no one else can hear makes her face fall.

"What do you _mean_ you—" Jester stops herself, the first spell already spent. She whirls to the rest of the group, her eyes wide and face crumpled with hurt. "Yasha says they _left_! What does that even _mean_?"

For a moment they're all shocked to silence. Caleb shuts his book with a quiet thump.

"What exactly did she say?" Fjord asks, trying to keep his voice calm and rational. 

"She—she said they need some time," Jester reports, her voice wobbling, "just the two of them, but they'll be safe and they'll come back and all, I guess because Yasha always comes back, but…" she shakes her head, a few tears spilling down her face. "But what if she _doesn't_ come back now that she has Molly with her? And she said I can't talk to Molly! She said I can Send to her back but not to Molly and I just—"

“She took her stuff with her,” Nott says hesitantly. “In case Molly needed something."

"But just like a blanket or something!" Jester protests. "Not like all her stuff for leaving, right? She wouldn't just leave with Molly _now_ , right?"

She looks around at all of them, one by one. “ _Right?_ ”

Of all of them, it’s Caleb who stands up, brushes himself off, and faces the group. “Perhaps,” he says quietly, “it is time we finally have a talk.”

* * *

Yasha had no idea just how much she missed a kind of quiet that isn’t cripplingly awkward or achingly lonely. She thinks that part of her was always reaching out for something in those quiet moments, and she didn’t really let herself acknowledge just what she was missing until she had Molly back. It’s always been part of their friendship, their unique way of being at ease with each other. She’s never found this kind of comfort from anyone else, other than perhaps Zuala. This feeling of acceptance in just being herself, being together without trying so hard—she missed it fiercely. She grips Molly’s hand tightly now, and swears to herself that she will die for good before she loses him again. 

Molly’s too tired to keep up much conversation with his hands for most of the day. Yasha worries about him, even as she’s finding so much comfort in just having him back with her. But at the very least, she knows Molly feels the same. The comfort of being together is something they’ve never had to find the words for anyway.

They stop and rest for the night fairly early; they haven’t even really put that much distance between themselves and the Mighty Nein, but Yasha feels pretty sure that they will respect what she’d asked of Jester. She feels a little bit bad that she couldn’t really explain their decision in only a handful of words. Jester hasn’t sent her another message, though, so she will have to wait and see if she reaches out again.

_I feel weird_ , he signs to her as she sets up their camp, that first night away from the Mighty Nein. _But not really bad weird. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m back. Don’t like not having my voice, but it’ll come back. I’ll be okay._

His hands shake a bit, and both of them are rusty at holding a proper conversation this way, but it’s not much of a problem. They know each other, still. There’s a thousand words they don’t need to say folded into the tight hug Yasha gives him, and the soft, silent laugh he breathes into her hair. 

It’s strange to have another person so close to her for so long. But at the same time, it’s the most natural feeling in the world now that it’s _Molly_ again. She doesn’t think twice before setting up her bedroll and blankets to accommodate the two of them inside her small tent; Molly doesn't hesitate to crawl inside and take up his share of the space, either. They fit together, like they always did, two puzzle pieces that shouldn’t match, but do. There’s no question that they stay together now, in the wake of everything that has changed. 

But even though everything is different, a few precious things feel the same. Molly curls up with his tail wound around her waist, and Yasha pulls the blankets over them both and tucks him under her arm. She almost misses it when Molly begins to purr, he’s so quiet, a bit stuttering at first. But she feels it, soft and soothing and so wonderfully familiar. She presses her lips to the crown of his head, and feels him purr a little stronger. 

They fall asleep together, easily, for the first time in so long.

* * *

“Perhaps,” Caleb says quietly, “it is time we finally have a talk about how we chose to bury our heads in the sand and run as fast as possible away from our feelings, and in doing so we left Mollymauk behind for _months._ And although it may hurt, he is extremely justified in not wanting to see us right now, and it would be unspeakably selfish of us to begrudge the two of them their decision.”

Beau wants to argue with him. She wishes so badly that she had something to snap back, any kind of reminder or reason, anything other than this useless lump in her throat. But standing here in this spot, it’s only too easy to remember the last time she was here. She remembers her argument with Nott, too high-strung on shock and unexpected grief to turn to anything but anger. She’s snapped at Nott back then, for thinking that she’d steal from a friend, a _dead_ friend no less. But—gods, maybe Nott was right about them after all. Maybe she stole from what used to be a happy person, took what they needed and told herself that she’d use it to bring him back to life, except she never did.

That broken promise is on her, then. Caleb won’t meet anybody’s eyes, but she knows that he’s thinking of it too. All the people they asked in Shady Creek Run, all the unspoken favors they were willing to recklessly, thoughtlessly rack up if it meant getting their hands on just a chance. And then the sinking, hollow feeling that came with rescuing the others and having to tell them that Molly died along the way. That he died _saving_ them and they hadn’t found a surefire way to get him back, and didn’t know if they _could_. So instead of risking it, they ran. _She_ ran away, again. 

She can't very well blame Molly and Yasha for doing exactly what she always did when feeling things got too painful to stay. 

“But we can find them again, right?” Jester asks in a small voice. “I mean, it’s… it’s not safe, right? They shouldn’t be alone out there! We can—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jester,” Fjord says gently. “I think… listen, it’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault,” he adds, with a glance at Caleb. “But it is their choice. We did what we could, and there’s been a lot of hurt on everybody for… for all the time that’s passed. And maybe we didn’t handle this as well as we could have, but we can’t change that now. What’s important is that Molly is back, and we know Yasha will take good care of him. She’ll get him back on his feet.”

Caduceus lays a large hand on Jester’s shoulder. “People grieve in different ways,” he says. “This is just another kind of grief. They’ll be back when they’re ready.”

“I’m sorry,” Nott mumbles. “I’m so—I just didn’t think, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, I was just… there’s so much to explain, and…”

Beau tries to speak, finds her throat aching and sticky with everything she hasn’t been able to say. She closes her mouth, swallows it all back down again. She’s not going to do this here. He’s back, anyway. She’s not about to let all this get the best of her when he’s fucking _back_ , and there’s no point to it. She’s just not. 

Jester quickly wipes her eyes on her sleeve. “It’s okay, Nott,” she says, her voice breaking just a little. “It’s… I’ll just…”

She trails off quietly. They all stand there, near the former grave, and one else has anything else to say.

“Back to the house, then?” Fjord asks flatly. There’s not much of an agreement, so much as no one objects. Caleb draws his circle in the ground without another word.

The house is completely still and silent when they get back. There’s no trace to be found of whatever was haunting them, no matter how many passes they do with spells detecting magic, evil, undeath, whatever the hell else they can detect. Yeza is just fine, and he seems confused about their dour natures and missing members, and no one has the heart to explain. Beau stands by herself in the garden for a long time. She thinks about that morning they lost, and the afternoon by the graveside. She can’t hear anything but her own memories, now. The house is clean, and quiet. 

They all gather up in the kitchen. They look at each other. And unanimously, without even unpacking their bags, they lock up the house and leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yasha's reply to the Sending, if anyone is curious: "Hello. We're okay. Sorry for leaving. We need some time alone, but we'll come back. And you can talk to me, but maybe not Molly, [because he's having trouble talking right now.]"  
> Sadly she got cut off near the end there.
> 
> yes I know I keep changing the chapter count. no I don't know how this keeps happening.


End file.
